SUMMER 21 June 2011

21st June, 2011  

Summer has arrived! Season of eternal youth. Out on the streets of New York the air is balmy and sexy and even with a list of errands or a job to go to we natives are in saunter-mode. Who knows how long it will last, New Yorkers don’t slow down for long, but there are these communal moments when this beast of a city and we wild animals, seem to allow ourselves the luxury of bringing it down a couple of notches. A good snow storm will do it, as will these first tropical days of summer and then the city has a childlike air to it, the way even the most driven of adults, when placed on a beach, suddenly become playful and filled with the wonder of their surroundings.

We’ve been like children since our return to the city, soaking up the pleasure of our apartment, waking to a breeze coming off the Hudson, watching the play of light on the river as the sun moves westward. Last night was the first night since we left the Cape that I didn’t dream about it. The letting go has begun but we are not completely washed of it yet. Tonight I took out the last of the lettuce I’d brought back from the garden and as I tore its still tender leaves into the wooden bowl, I wept. The last rose – an America – sits on the sink in the bathroom like an anthem. . .

. . . while the Compassion is already pressed into the pages of this book

And in the rocking of our boat we are gentled.

Here’s a favorite poem of ours by Juan Ramon Jimenez

OCEANS

I have a feeling that my boat

  Has struck, down there in the depths,

    Against a great thing.

     And nothing 

Happens!

         Nothing. . . Silence. . .Waves. . .

     ----Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

         and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

The sun is beginning to dip and Joel says: 

“We have bloomed, and now we are pollen.”

So we take our pollen-selves, stroll down to the river and sit on a rock at the water’s edge. The sun is not extravagant this evening, the clouds thick with impending rain shroud its orb, yet the light still comes through, dappling the river with pink and peach ripples. It’s sweet and simple and as dusk falls we wend our way back up through Riverside Park where in the fading light a host of fireflies dance for us.  Summer in the city.

Yes, those little specks you see, they're fireflies!